


and if you say goodbye too many times

by wanderNavi



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: Gen, Mention of Suicidal Tendencies, Minor Chrom/My Unit | Reflet | Robin, minor Frederick, minor Sumia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-06
Updated: 2018-08-06
Packaged: 2019-06-23 01:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15595083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderNavi/pseuds/wanderNavi
Summary: Robin dies and comes back, but in between...“Here, take my hand.” With a tug, Robin gets to her feet. “Walk with me.”They walk.





	and if you say goodbye too many times

**Author's Note:**

> lmao it's been years since i last wrote fanfic. big thank to the discord for enabling all our weird ideas, this wouldn't have happened without your encouragement and cheering.

R laughs them into the tea shop, the empty street volleying the sound back and forth in a hollow tinged echo. Robin follows uneasily as silence presses back down on the empty land, devoid of friendly occupants, paranoia creeping up her neck. This eternal night of a realm still rings foreign to her.

Shucking off sand clogged scarves and layers, R paces over the wooden boards, lighting the carefully trimmed candles with snaps of muttered fire. If Robin didn’t know better from the recent past – there is no time she can reliably measure, only the passage of geography – she would mistake their entrance for trespassing into a recently vacated building. For all the raging sandstorms R tells her of, the surfaces are a polished shine bereft of dust.

She shivers in her borrowed cloths.

“Care for some tea?” Good humor tinges his voice. “Or perhaps something stronger for the road, like coffee.”

Robin turns away from the window to face her travel companion. “Tea is fine.”

He hums and clatters about behind the bar, pulling out a swollen, heavy pot and packets of leaves. R points Robin to some glass faced cabinets. “Cups and a teapot should be in there. Mind getting them out while I draw water?”

“Sure.”

After setting out a platter and dragging chairs to the counter, she also loads wood into the hearth and lights it was a burst of spell fire. R comes back with the water.

“Have a seat while the water boils,” Robin calls out. “Watching the pot won’t make it go faster.”

He keeps his back to her on the other side of the counter. The crackle of burning wood and the hiss of bubbling water sticks through the silence, firelight licks at the edges of his body, this man wandering the sands, making claims that he is a her, a different her, outlandish claims whipping in the outlandish air.

“R?”

“We need to talk.”

* * *

When Emmeryn fell, grief riled Chrom into an emotional frenzy, raging through tears in his tent with only Robin and Frederick’s eyes watching. They let him ride out the storm, pushing water into his hands. At Robin’s offer to fetch Sumia, Chrom refused. In the face of the prince’s anguish and Lissa’s distraught panic, the peace on the dead Exalt’s face – what remained unbroken by the fall – tugged Robin in confusion. Even with her sparse memories, the calm acceptance of death despite the pain brought to loved ones clashed with the tooth-and-nail strangle hold on life Robin picked up from living and breathing military. Robin protects her men, dragging every last one she can back home. Ylisse already lost too many of its young to war.

Chrom’s shouts wash over her. He’ll have no body to bury, no reanimated Risen. Morgan is in good care with the Shepherds and the other children, protected from Grima’s touch. Frederick will keep his promise to not grieve long. Fingers try to grasp hers.

“Robin!” Grima’s plummeting body shudders, sending Chrom stumbling and clutching at Falchion’s bite into the dragon’s neck. “Robin you promised!”

But, _ah_ , she thinks through the burning of her brand and the numb tranquility creeping up her body dissolving away. _So that’s how Emmeryn did it_.

Tears shine Chrom’s eyes. Robin waves. Peacefully. Yes, Ylisse should be more peaceful now. Her drafted policies and plans are all safely stashed in her desk back at the castle. Frederick knows how to access them.

_Smile, Chrom. It’s all over now._

“May we meet again, in a better life.”

* * *

“Here, take my hand.” With a tug, Robin gets to her feet. “Walk with me.”

They walk.

Sands stretch out in hills and valleys around the walking pair. The air freezes, instead of the burns Robin remembers from marches through Plegia’s deserts. No stars shine in the black void above their heads, but the sands shine with the glint of starlight, casting light upwards onto Robin’s new travel companion.

Bits and pieces of a familiar outfit ensemble float to the surface among the wraps and coats enshrouding the man. Rugged boots in the same pattern as hers. A belt laden with books, loose sheets of spell paper, crackling maps. A levin sword. Robin pulls her coat tighter around her.

“Where is this?” Robin asks. “I thought I … I thought I died.”

A huff of laughter. “You did die. Didn’t Naga tell you?”

The man faces Robin, eyes dancing with fire and amusement. “To answer your question though, this is nowhere. An in between realm. Are you familiar with the outrealms?”

“Yes, though I don’t have much experience traveling them.”

“This place is similar. Striking a blow against Grima’s borrowed heart extinguished your life in the process through the linkage between your bodies. But Grima’s death wasn’t enough to drag you into death fully as well. So, here we are.” The man gives a whirl, presenting the monotonous expanses to Robin with splayed arms. The fine sands shift under Robin’s feet, grittier than the Plegian dunes she led the Shepherds through.

Robin frowns and says, “You’re contradicting yourself. I died, but am not fully dead?”

“Very nearly dead. Almost the same thing.” His smile cuts and indignation rise in Robin to meet his slice with a parry.

 _A strangle hold grasp on life_ , Robin thinks, and pushes him with more questions. “Then how did you end up here?”

“Where are our manners,” he says. “What’s your name?”

“Robin.”

“And these days, I call myself R. Different worlds meet at this crossroad. I from one, you another”

Like the children, like Grima. Bits and pieces of a familiar ensemble, confirmation of a quickly discarded idea, but yes, it seems, though unlikely and off kilter, likely that – “You’re me.”

Robin stops walking.

“How?”

“Different worlds, Robin. Different worlds, different fates, different paths.” The smile wipes off R’s face. “And if we don’t handle your passage through here right, you’ll end up like me.”

* * *

“We talk quite often. About what?”

R hums. “When the tea is ready.”

“And leave me in suspense?” Robin sighs.

The pale light shining from the sand cast R into a washed-out pallor most of the time. Years before, Robin reckons he sported a tan from time on the field, but now his skin is pale, coarse from sand laden winds. The candles and the hearth don’t light the room enough to see clearly. Robin distantly hopes her eyes won’t burn with strain when she returns to sunlit realms. She fiddles with the tea leaves, breathing in the scents while waiting in silence.

The water boils, and R steeps the leaves. Then pours the tea. Sits.

“How’s your Chrom?”

Oh.

“Probably distressed.” R takes his tea the same way Robin does. “Definitely distressed. They all presume me dead.”

R has a vast array of smiles, mostly bitter. “Of course.”

“Happy though,” Robin plows on. “Well set to rule a successful reign, unless the lesser nobles hatch some plot in the far future that I didn’t counteract, and he can’t deflect. Settled with the kids, though needs reminding he’s not his father. Frederick will keep him on track with peacetime politics.

“How about your Chrom?”

R takes an evasive sip of tea.

“R?”

He asks, “Chrom’s happy? Unburdened by heavy casualties? Ylisse with good harvest and good coin?”

“Yes. I would have been far more hesitant casting the final blow on Grima if Ylisse wasn’t secure enough to handle the inevitable troubles from Plegia falling apart again or any internal ruckus. Chrom has instructions and I’ve drafted contingency plans with the scouts sent into Plegia on how to handle most scenarios within the expected realm of sanity. He should have a fine legacy to pass down with Falchion, even if we aren’t successful finding the Gate out of here.”

At the reminder of the shared task at hand, R shakes out of his stupor. “Right. The Gate. We don’t have much longer to find it before our window of opportunity to send you back closes. When we do find it though, there’s a process I need to preform that I haven’t shared with you yet.”

His hand shoots out to tap Robin’s brand. “We need to get rid of this.”

* * *

R drops a heap of glass before Robin. “Engraved spell glass,” he explains. “Works in a pinch and easy to collect with a good jolt or two of elfire or elthunder on the sand. Just need to take the time to carve them, but paper is a scarce commodity out here.”

“Not many trees,” Robin murmurs as she picks up a shard for inspection.

“Exactly, and no hatchets either anyways. Occasionally, a town pops up randomly and I can stock up on supplies there. Take a few blank shards, I’ll teach you how to engrave and channel spells properly, so it won’t explode in your hand.”

“What do you do with the shards that run out of durability?”

“Blunt weapons.”

The first hostile entities Robin meets, R obliterates with a carelessly tossed dose of flame. He answers most of his problems with flame, Robin is learning. Messily, and with excess grandeur. Slightly weaker than the lightning Robin prefers. When R uses the glass spells, they melt into slag. His spell books turn brittle, and curl blackened. Lissa and Nowi should shout him back to happiness.

The second time the pair encounter the wild, howling clay and sand automatons roaming the sands, R indulgently allows Robin to try her hand using the books that tagged along with her body into this half-death. He flinches slightly at the hissing crackle of lightning attacks. Robin switches to flames as well, particularly after a mishap with arcwind sends sand flying into everyone’s faces.

“These beasts remind me of the Revenant,” Robin comments to R. He blinks owlishly at her. “The Risen that attacked with claws? A hassle for mounted units since they make the horses skittish while traveling underground.”

“Oh, those.”

He looks back down at the dissolving corpses. “Not quite. Sometimes the Risen begged. These are more like feral hounds.”

The beasts are infrequent visitors. The monotony of the landscape poses the true enemy to Robin, rolling over and over in repeat, with only R’s assurance they aren’t walking in circles. Her feet tug her towards a point over the horizon never coming closer. No maps, no clear directions, no worn paths, only R’s gentle nudging away from traps in the geography and towards abandoned wind eaten oases. She reads time in the grit grinding down on her boots, the almost eagerly anticipated clashes, the wrenching longing to return to her friends and family.

They walk.

* * *

“And just what does ‘end up like you’ entail?”

“Stuck here.” He drags a shoulder upwards in a shrug. “Or worse, fully dead, slipping away.”

A hope Robin squashed through the dash towards the final battle unfurls in peeks and slips. “You imply that I can return.”

“I say that the task will be hard. Not impossible, it’s happened with other copies of us, but not all. If your resolve to return wavers, if your friends lose their hope in your survival, if the bonds guiding you forwards weaken and the connection snaps, then it’s over. Our destination is actually rather straightforward. Everyone who successfully passed through has a unique Gate. Some attractive force, probably the bonds calling you home, directs you to it. Walk though, and you return.”

“Are you certain that I’ll return to my world through the Gate?” Robin asks.

R’s gives a sheepish grin. “Not like they poke their head back through to let me know.”

“Quite a gamble.”

“But worth the risk rather than a certain death.”

And yes, that’s right. Robin made peace with death, with serving a duty to take out the corroding threat of Grima, with wiping out the fell dragon’s ability to revive himself again and again. But she has a son, a husband, a kingdom, a family she found and forged and bleed for to return to.

Chrom’s fingers passing through hers.

Robin snaps her hood up and pulls her gloves on tighter. “How far away is this Gate going to be, you think?”

“No idea,” R blithely answers.

“Not even a guess based on the other passages through here?”

“Nope.”

“Will the sun ever rise?”

“Not that I’ve seen.”

Robin huffs in frustration. “Give me one of your countless scarves.”

With a laugh, he tosses her one.

* * *

Robin relinquishes her right hand to R’s tugging. “Get rid of the brand? Isn’t it embedded into the skin the same way the Mark of Naga is embedded on the Exalt line?”

R’s laugh grumbles. “Why do you keep resisting the ways this crossroads isn’t the same realm you came from? In practice, when the rules of reality are slightly stricter, you’re right. Besides, the brand isn’t so much the issue as a symptom. We’re yanking out the fell blood magic that gives Grima influence through your bloodline. The brand just tends to disappear in the process.”

“Makes sense, its appearance was a marker that a child made a suitable vessel,” Robin muses. The candle’s flickering flames make the eyes dance over her veins. “What about Morgan though?”

“Your son? Swear him to chastity,” R quips. “But on a more serious note, I’m not entirely sure. Grima is able to influence our children, though that might be more of a product of being at the height of his strength than due to the magic inherited.”

“Morgan has the brand too,” Robin says quietly.

R lets go to pick up his cup of tea again. Just as hushed and weighed down he says, “Mine did too.”

They drink, until R’s frustration erupts like a burst of Bolganone. “I _hate_ how little I know. Every one of you, of us, with the same questions again and again, and the same extrapolations I have to offer. I’ve ferried too many of us around this desert, with only myself for company, and snippets and tales of repeating fates for news and nourishment. These sand beasts, who are they! These Gates, where are they from! Where do they lead? And these brands, what will happen in your futures, a century, a millennium, generation upon generation later? Is Grima truly slain?”

“Naga says –”

“ _And her!_ I’ve defied her skepticism, bringing us back so many times. Back to companions, back to the tethers of our bonds, dragging us back home. Where’s my Gate? I’ve crossed these sands so long, where’s my Gate? Chrom – I promised him – I –” His face collapses into his hands.

Robin refills his cup. “You don’t trust in our fallible gods?”

R’s laugh creeks and limps. “There are no gods, Robin, only beasts. Just age and time as a teacher. Their longevity will kill them all the same. We’re killing a so-called god over and over, aren’t we?”

Robin wields a sharp blade, a sharp tongue, a sharp mind, tuned to the crackle of lightning and the thunder of battle. Gentleness comes to her stumbling and ungainly. “The process of removing the brand. What is it?”

“Unduly extravagant in appearances, but a simple matter at its core. The Gate will take energy and magic to open and I funnel the blood magic into feeding the Gate. Filtering through me, I can moderate the inflow, so you won’t be sucked dry. When the brand fades away, I’ll send you through. It’s my fanfare send off I give all of us that succeed. There will be lights and runes and circles wheeling through the air. Quite some ceremony.”

The teapot empties.

“After I leave,” Robin says, “what will happen to you?”

A wind begins prowling up the street outside. Its sandy fingers tap at cracks along windows, doors, walls, whispering to be let in. Whistling, howling, a sandstorm picks up, a cacophony trying to drown out R’s choked out answer. “I’ll stay here, as I have every time. I’ll stay here so that more of us can live out lives back with friends and family.”

The streetlights outside sap into darkness.

* * *

R skirts around his past in conversation, quietly absorbing the bits Robin shares about her Shepherds. About the antics and campaigns. Her words drop into the dark pool of his recollections, shadowed by whatever he experienced. He passes on gossip from other Robins he guided in the past, alternative marriages and different parentages. Ill fates and happy memories that Robin didn’t experience. Like hearing recollections of plays staring her friends.

“We’ve journeyed together so long, but I don’t think you’ve mentioned much about your Shepherds.” She hesitates. “It … hasn’t been too long for you?”

They crest a dune before R gives a reply, staring out over the desert from their great height rather than look at her. “I spent these trips wondering why I didn’t do so well. What turns of fates killed my companions but saved yours. What failings I committed to condemn the Shepherds to decimation in trying to fight Grima and his human puppets. Injury took some of us out. Weariness others. Our ranks, already small, thinned. In the end, we barely defeated Grima.

“In the end, Chrom still lived. By the gods, he still lived. I’d make all the same sacrifices and more, so he lived through the fell dragon’s revival. He lived, and in the end, that’s what matters most to me.”

R slides down the dune before Robin, leaving her standing at the top.

“You loved him?” She calls after his retreating back.

R has a vast array of smiles, mostly bitter.

“How could I not?”

* * *

Their sparse conversation dwindles as Robin leads them towards the towering bones. Ribs jut into the black sky and the sand shines as unnaturally as always. Dead eyes watch with a silvery glow. They pick their cautious way over cracked open femurs and piles ground to dust. The winds push claws clattering down, chattering in a language Robin’s ears aren’t privy to. The already cold night, dips further into chill. Breath puff into clouds.

If R has misgivings about the path Robin leads them through, he let’s his face do all the voicing. Since he doesn’t give verbal complaint though, Robin presses onwards, to where the dead whispering grows louder, and the yearning tug is stronger. Like an invitation back into bed, like the fresh smell of a feast after a day of hard labor. Like home.

Home, home, home.

She steps over scattered remains of the dead.

Steps, walks, breaks into a run towards a warmth creeping into her veins, shooting her forwards with cracks of electricity.

She runs, until R hollers to her to stop, and a gaping pit leers up at her. A great sinkhole, a hungry maw.

“What are you thinking! Just running through here?” He shakes her aggressively, which is just unfair.

“But home, it’s –” she flings her finger downward into the shining black pit. “The Gate, it’s down there.”

R withdraws his hands from her shoulders and looks down with trepidation. “Gods.”

* * *

“True, how can I not.” Robin follows him down into the valley of sand.

“I –” For the first time in Robin’s time traveling with R, he colors with embarrassment. Even in the teashop, he moved past the brief breakdown with slightly ruffled ease. “I grew selfish towards the end. I believed Naga and thought I would definitely die when I struck down Grima. So, in that last moment, I snuck a kiss, never mind everyone who could be watching or that Chrom was already married to someone else.”

He squares his shoulder in a stubborn shrug. “I don’t fully regret what I did. Just that Chrom’s last impression of me was that desperation. And the unfairness I pushed on him as a result.

“Chrom gave me a world and an identity. How could I not love him?” R kicks up some sand over his foot, weight shifting awkwardly from side to side.

“Of course,” Robin agrees, rather than asking, _but where is your Gate? What stopped you from going back and froze you in this halfdead state, keeping you away from passing on into another life to wait for Chrom?_

* * *

Robin helps R down onto another sliver of a perch deeper into the writhing darkness.

“For someone with such a good run, your Gate is ominously dismal,” R’s voice ventures.

Robin squeezes his trembling hand. “Tell me about the other Gates.”

“Most are just doors in the desert. Or an archway. Or just a frame for around the door. Simple. Walk through, done. Some of the others though. One was at the edge of this realm. The sand simply stops, and everything abruptly cuts off into darkness beyond the border. This wall, stretching as far as we could see to both sides. I didn’t stay around long after sending him off.

“Another, worse, was in the sea. There’s one in the opposite direction we traveled. No matter how much wind magic we used to cut into the water, we could never reach the Gate. And no boats either. Never mind how deep it might have laid. That one. That one faded with despair. Gave up eventually. Tried running into the sea once, but I dragged them out.

“But I’ve never been in the bone yard. I didn’t even know there was this sink hole.”

She leads them scooting along the ledges inching downwards, following the pull guiding her steps. “Is this like the darkness at the edge of the realm?”

“No.” His other hand scrapes against the rough walls curling up above their heads, the pit widening the lower they travel. “That was solid. And completely dead. Like if a bird flew in, it would drop dead at immediate contact. This is just darkness and indeterminant heights.”

“Not the bottom of the realm?” Robin’s laugh echoes.

“No, no.” R squeezes back. Laughs quietly. “Maybe.”

The wind follows them down into the pit, chattering and whispering, a faint undercurrent. Robin talks to muffle its creeping approaches. “R, just how long have you been in this Realm?”

“You know there is no time.”

“How many have you guided?”

“Many.”

The question rises to her lips, emboldened by the fiery draw. “Can you feel your Gate?”

The wall turns. The darkness presses. The wind monologues.

“No. I gave it up.”

* * *

Robin helps Frederick with sorting through the convoy’s inventory, wrapping up camp activities. Lingering conversation travels through the star-soaked night. She asks, “How long has your family been serving the Exalts?”

He sets aside the lances, moves down the list to the next item. “Generations, in various forms. We aren’t quite nobles but share privileges for our service. For each reign, at least one in the generation serves as a knight for the Exalt. For instance, my grandmother.”

“Did you use to be nobles?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know why your ancestors would give that up?”

Frederick lifts the stack of tomes from Robin’s hands. “The cause is greater. Service to the Exalt and Ylisse’s prosperity became our primary duty.”

His eyes pierce into hers.

“You understand that don’t you, Robin.”

The candlelight flickers over his stare.

“You’re right,” she sighs. “Chrom gave me a world and an identity.”

* * *

R nearly stumbles into Robin with a curse. Turning to him is no use in the darkness, and she doesn’t know how wide the ledge is if it’s safe for sudden pivots.

“You gave it up?” Her words rattle down the walls.

“Yes. I did. Don’t _stop_ like that. What if I sent us both of into this however deep pit? Give some warning.”

Robin stops him before he can get going any further. “ _You gave up your Gate?_ ”

“Yes! I’m not the first one running around here, guiding to and fro! There were guides before me. Just. Keep walking. I’ll explain.”

They walk.

“He looked like he could be my twin, if more harried and worn out. Not in the sense that Grima carries our bodies back through time, but similar enough. Unnervingly enough. My Gate was so far away. Beyond where the desert melts into grasslands and the grasslands melts into forests. It was all the way on the top of the mountain. Gave me time to think. To talk like we have. Full of questions I didn’t have answers for and thought I wanted answers for. Full of worries of the comrades I left behind. Chrom, who I left behind.

“With Grima fallen and Plegia being wrestled into peace, I hoped that Ylisse wouldn’t be dragged into anymore wars in my lifetime. Chrom lives for the action but hates the reminder of his father’s draining campaigns. Nor did Emmeryn fully soothe the resentment and pain among the older citizens. Or the ambitions in the court that feed on leaching off Plegia’s trade thanks to the crusades.

“Those years of peace in between the campaigns I led didn’t sit well with me, though. All I knew was the battlefield and the court politics sapped my energy. If I returned, it felt like I would waste away. Not to mention, have to face however Chrom felt about the kiss. Walking up that mountain, doubts grew and suddenly I couldn’t take it, couldn’t go through.

“The other Robin, my guide, he must have picked up my turmoil. And offered a choice. I could die or take his mantel.”

Robin hums. “And what happened to him?”

“We used the Gate as a jolt of energy to keep us going for a while, so he could start teaching me. Then he died. Seems like there can only be two at once in this realm. One guiding, one leaving.” Robin’s hand grasping R’s hand swung up and down with his shrug. “He was tired, Robin. He was ready to move on to a better life.”

* * *

Slowly, the darkness recedes, sliver by sliver. The path widens. And sitting at the bottom of the pit, a glowing door. The Gate.

* * *

Sumia stands steadiest surrounded by the soft whickering of horses and pegasi. She guides Robin though the stables, both carrying bags of feed.

“What do you plan on doing in the future?” Sumia asks her between stalls.

“Read all the books in the Ylisstol castle library?” Robin laughs. “I’m not quite certain. Explore? I know so little about this world. For a group of people making such sweeping impacts on the land, that seems dangerous.”

“You’d just leave? Take to the roads?”

“Well,” Robin says, watching Sumia greet the animals with kind words and kind touches, in her skin, comfortably settled and even footed in a way she isn’t elsewhere. “Maybe you should come with me. We’d both go riding out into the dawn and the twilight. Map the lands, tour the towns. Talk with people, eat cheap local food. Truly live in the kingdom, just you, me, and your favorite pegasus.”

Ears flick to Sumia’s gentle laughter. “You’d take me with you?”

“Absolutely.”

* * *

“Ready?”

“You did promise me much fanfare and ceremony.”

“Alright.” R takes out a stub of chalk. “Stand still while I prepare the spell.”

With well-practiced _takt, takt, takt_ R draws out a magic circle around Robin. Lines swoop in and out of the circumference. A bud blooms out around her Gate. Another blooms out on the opposite side and R steps into it. For the first time, R draws his levin sword.

“Helps to take your bracers and gloves off, parts of this are surprisingly literal.”

Without further ado, he plunges the blade into the spell and the runes flare to life. Lightning snaps in the air. Circles swivel and stack in expanding rings around Robin, R, and the Gate.

And the Gate.

It feeds greedily on the scarps of blood magic R slips it, pulling on Robin insistently with sticky fingers yanking on her coat for attention. _Home_ , it promises and tries to eat up the rest of her energy in payment. The levin sword tremors in a fine frequency. Light hisses up and into the slowly opening door.

In a faint undercurrent, Robin notices thin sips of magic tracing into R, but not back out. Tiny drops of Grima’s corrosive blood magic gathering in the man. Then her brand distracts her.

With a charged howl, it flakes and peels off her hand. Piece by piece, the six-eyed insignia lifts into air between her and R.

 _One guiding, one leaving_. Robin thinks. _But be selfish, be self-serving, before service and duty wears you down into a paste and a washed-out face and a worn-out soul ready to die._

“Almost over.” R’s voice strains under the exertion.

_The Gate as energy, magic as energy, crude fire burning and burning out._

_Who was the first one to arrive in this realm? Who was there to guide them?_

The Gate fully opens. The light reaches a fever pitch, bleaching out the colors.

Morgan’s determination to grow to higher heights as a tactician. Chrom’s earnestness to serve well on the throne and maintain peace across Ylisse. Sumia’s gentleness with the horses and pegasi. Frederick’s determination. The children’s plight finally extinguished.

“I’m going home.”

And R smiles. “Yes, you are.”

The wind and light pull Robin to the open doorway.

* * *

At the threshold, Robin extends her hand. “Here, take my hand.”

He hesitates.

**Author's Note:**

> “…horses and pegasi…” – A friend of mine brought to my attention that Pegasus isn’t the name of the species. It’s just the name of the most famous representative. Hence troubles finding the plural for these winged horses online. Pterippi appears to be the more accurate term for the species, and possibly the plural as well. However, that’s a bit esoteric. I go with the clumsier, but more familiar “pegasi” that the game also uses instead.


End file.
